Tillman, an ex-NFL star who
threw away his career and a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals
to fight Bush's war as an Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan this week.

According to the Bush
Ministry of Disinformation, Fox News division, Tillman was killed during a
search-and-destroy operation near Khost, Afghanistan. Tillman's unit, the
75th Ranger Regiment, "was acting on intelligence about possible Taliban or
Al Qaeda fighters when a firefight erupted. Tillman was the only Ranger
killed in his unit, although military officials said two other U.S. soldiers
were injured."

So, how did the CIA
indirectly kill Pat Tillman? It's quite simple, actually -- the CIA created
and provided sustenance for both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

After the Soviets unwisely
invaded Afghanistan, the CIA and its Pakistani client, the ISI, recruited
the most vile and demented Muslim fundamentalists it could scrounge up. For
instance, guys like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, "a particularly fanatical
fundamentalist and woman-hater," as journalist Tim Weiner writes. "[Hekmatyar's]
followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who
refused to wear the veil."

So enamored was Jimmy
Carter, Zbigniew Brezinski, Harold Brown, Pakistan's military dictator
General Zia-ul-Haq, Ronald Reagan -- he liked to call Hekmatyar and his
cutthroat associates "freedom fighters" - William Casey and the CIA with the
so-called Afghan rebels, they spent a whopping $6 billion grooming them.
Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries
in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia, and the Far East
were recruited.

Reagan was so excited about
the idea of the mujahideen killing conscripted Soviet teenagers he issued
National Security Decision Directive 166,29, a secret plan to significantly
escalate covert action in Afghanistan. Reagan's directive came bundled with
all sorts of fancy high-tech equipment and military assistance. "Beginning
in 1985, the CIA supplied mujahideen rebels with extensive satellite
reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for
military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of
Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels,
delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban
sabotage, and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a
targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite,
wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment," writes Phil Gasper.
"By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a
'ceaseless stream' of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to
plan mujahideen operations."

One of these radical
Muslims was Osama bin Laden.

In 1984, bin Laden was
running Maktab al-Khidamar, an ISI created organization devised to funnel
money into Reagan's war against the Soviets. Although the Bush Ministry of
Disinformation likes to claim Reagan and the CIA did not directly support
bin Laden, defendants accused of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya have
revealed the CIA shipped high-powered sniper rifles directly to bin Laden's
operation in 1989, a fact confirmed by the Tennessee-based manufacturer of
the rifles. "In 1988, with U.S. knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (the
Base): a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread
across at least 26 countries," explains Indian journalist Rahul Bhedi.
"Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda, confident that it would not
directly impinge on the U.S."

Of course, on September 11,
2001, everything changed.

As for the Taliban, they
were nurtured by the ISI and the Pakistani army. According to Selig
Harrison, the creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI
and the CIA." Glyn Davies, State Department spokesperson, saw "nothing
objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law on the
war-battered people of Afghanistan.

Strict Islamic law,
naturally, is good for business, just like it is in Saudi Arabia.

"The Taliban will probably
develop like the Saudis," a US diplomat predicted in 1997. "There will be
Aramco, pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can
live with that." As well, they could live with the Taliban executing people
for listening to music and women teachers. In May 2002, after Bush invaded,
Hamid Karzai, the handpicked "interim ruler" of Afghanistan, held talks with
his counterparts in Pakistan and Turkmenistan to finalize details on an
850-kilometer gas pipeline.

But it wasn't simply gas
pipelines that motivated the CIA and the ISI -- it was, as well, the profits
to be gained from drug production and smuggling. "The proposed pipelines
were not the only motive for Pakistani support of the Taliban," writes Chris
Slee in a review of Ahmed Rashid's Taliban: The Story of the Afghan
Warlords. "Sections of the Pakistani ruling class were heavily involved in
the smuggling of drugs and other goods between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
They preferred to deal with the Taliban rather than a multitude of competing
warlords, each demanding a share of the profits." In his book, Rashid
documents how an "immense narcotics trade had developed under the
legitimizing umbrella of the CIA-ISI covert supply line to the Afghan
mujaheddin." In other words, Reagan's favored thugs were not only killing
Soviets, but growing and selling opium that would eventually show up as
heroin on the streets of America and Europe.

Now that al-Qaeda and the
Taliban are official enemies, after billions of dollars of investment -- and
an undetermined amount of money earned by the CIA and the ISI in the Afghan
drug trade -- Bush is spending billions more to hunt 'em down and smoke 'em
out in true Texas cowboy fashion. It is never mentioned by the Bush Ministry
of Disinformation, who will undoubtedly and disgustingly play up the
"all-American hero" end of Pat Tillman's death, that the CIA created the
"monster," as Selig Harrison termed it, currently killing Americans the same
way it killed Soviets two decades ago.

For millions of Americans,
conditioned daily by the corporate pro-war media, the Taliban and al-Qaeda
came out of nowhere, a rabble of terrorists united simply by their undivided
hatred of our way of life and revulsion for our so-called freedom, as Dubya
the Christian Zionist Crusader would have it.

Never mentioned is the
possibility that Pat Tillman was murdered by militant Islamic warriors
trained by the CIA at Camp Peary, Virginia, also known as the "Farm" (see
Giles Foden, "Blowback Chronicles," the Guardian, September 15, 2001).
Instead of attributing Tillman's death to blowback and failed policies, the
Bushites wasted little time elevating the misguided and brainwashed football
star's "patriotism" to mythical proportions and, unfortunately, they have
cynically exploited it as an example of selfless "sacrifice" in the "war on
terrorism," in other words the neocon war against Islam in the name of
Israel, oil, neoliberalism, and corporate carpetbaggerism. "Pat Tillman was
an inspiration both on and off the football field," the White House declared
soon after news of his death was released for public consumption. "As with
all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror, his family is in
the thoughts and prayers of President and Mrs. Bush."

According to Tim Layden, a
senior writer for Sports Illustrated, Tillman "viewed life through a
different prism than a lot of other people do." In fact, Pat Tillman viewed
life precisely the same way millions of Americans do, that is to say he
uncritically bought into Bush's lies and warmongering. As if to underscore
the complete lack of reality Americans endure, a poll conducted by the
University of Maryland this week reveals that 82 percent of Americans still
believe Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda conspired together and Saddam had WMD,
even though this fantasy was completely discredited months ago, most notably
by the testimony of David Kay, the administration's chief weapons inspector.
Of this percentage, according to the poll, 72 percent said they would vote
for Bush in November.

Down the road, as Bush
continues and intensifies the occupation of Iraq and plots invasions of
Syria and Iran, to name but two on the neocon hit list, more Pat Tillmans
will arrive at Dover Air Force base in Delaware, victims who stared into
Bush's distorted and fractured prism one too many times.